For speaking opportunities,
interviews, op-eds, book-signings, art exhibitions and ways to support my work
as a blogger, author, a budding digital artist, and a pro-democracy activist, please
reach out to me through this contact form.

Today’s
Post is brought to you by…Brotherhood
of the Continuously Reshuffled Deck: We really suck at card games. But
we’re addicted to shuffling.

A Preview of 2016

by the world’s most famous think tanks and intelligence analysts

Does
France’s
recent strike against oil IS installations in Raqqahcontradict the thesis
I present in this article? No. The sites were of minor significance, and of the
type previously targeted by the U.S. and Russia, that is,they consist of sotrage
facilities and small separation units. IS has quite of them, and, relatively
speaking, they are easy to replace and relatively cheap.

* Experts at the
CSIS, the Brookings Institution, the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Carnegie
Endowment for World Peace, among other American think tanks, predict that the
term of President Obama in office will finally come to an end sometimes during
the last quarter of 2016; with their indicators indicating that he will likely
be succeeded either by a Republican or a Democrat.

* Professional sanctimonious
bastard and occasional GOP presidential candidate, Donald Trump, predicts that
2016 will be “uuuuuge” for him, and his family. However, experts are not sure
if he was referring to the size of his ego, or his chances at actually winning
the nomination. What they are certain of, however, is that the size of his
actual dick is definitely not the issue here, as Mr. Trump’s compensatory
manners have always been easy to read.

* The strategic whatchamacallit,
Stratfor, forecasts that people will keep on consuming water, eating food and
breathing throughout 2016 despite the inherent risks to the environment. They
also note that the likelihood of holding an international conference to ban
such dangerous activities is still not in the cards for that year.

* Financial analysts at the IMF
and the World Bank are forecasting that the world financial systems will
witness another meltdown sometimes during 2016, but, they note, that the
meltdown will take place during a global economic uptick and increased
investments in securities and bonds, a phenomenon which may or may not help to
counterbalance the potential effects of the possible meltdown at a time of
growing insecurity and rapid repeated fluctuations of stock prices and markets
stability.

* Meanwhile, foreign policy
experts have unanimously predicted that the world will witness quite a bit of
turbulence in 2016 due to conflicts and sheer assholery and incompetence on
part of so many world leaders and “those pesky terrorists.” In response, they
advise the current administration to do everything it can and want to do, and
absolutely nothing that it cannot or does not want to do, in order to ensure
that American interests, defined as those things that are particularly
interesting to certain segments of the interested public, are protected.

* Finally, and in regard to
Syria, Syria experts are seriously predicting that 2016 will be a year of more
Syria predictions made by an ever multiplying number of Syria experts who by
now should know more or more likely less about Syria than they had few bloody Syrian
years ago when they all advocated a policy of active involvement in producing
more Syria experts in order to expertly analyze the Syrian situation in a
manner that could lead to a greater understanding of the sheer courage and
intellectual travails of Syria experts and the difficult challenges they often
encounter in a world where their expertise and their growing mental anguish as
a result of having to continuously monitor the quagmire that is today’s Syria,
on their own, is so callously shunned and ill appreciated by all and sundry, despite
being consistently devoid of any common sense, decency or accuracy, that is,
the very stuff that news agencies and outlets are always in the hunt for ad
with which they continuously bombard us.

But, there is little reason for
conspiratorial thinking here, and the act that he died a die before his trip to
Paris, a city he visited before, seems incidental. Those who know Naji, or, at
least, of him, as is the case with me, know pretty well that IS had some very
good reasons to want him dead: he was a secular intellectual who supported
like-minded activists in Raqqa, city and governorate, who were busy chronicling
IS quiet slaughter of the spirit of a place known for its rebellious and independent
streak. Through Hintah, the journal he edited, he also provided young secular
activists with an important platform to debate ideas and to expose both IS and
Assad’s crimes. His connection to Western organizations was also anathematic to
the organization, which, like the Assad regime, prefers to deal with an
isolated and docile population. Naji was not the kind of person who could give
anyone such satisfaction. The campaign against figures like Naji was began by
the Assad regime and long before the revolution. In fact, it has always been a
hallmark of the security state that the Assad built in Syria, transforming what
was one a potentially viable albeit struggling democracy into a failed-state
project. Fascists sustain themselves by killing the hope in our hearts and the
light in our minds. That’s why people like Naji live with an X mark on their
foreheads, theirs is always a death foretold.

The implications of the Paris
Agreement on climate change: Since the whole idea is to move beyond fossil fuel
(coal, oil and natural gas) dependency by 2050, one cannot but wonder as to the
potential fate of all those states who depend on fossil fuel production and
sales to keep their economies functioning. Were they given enough time to make
the transition beyond this particular dependency? More importantly, and setting
aside the sole reliance on a “name and shame” policy as the only “enforcement”
tool, how economically feasible for certain states to make such a transition,
or to ditch their dependency on fossil fuel?

In practical terms, the agreement
signals the beginning of a century long multifaceted and complicated
competition pitting fossil fuel producers against each other, against consumers
and against those countries that can actually afford to make the transition. In
fact, when the transition begins to hurt, many countries will regard the
agreement as Western-led conspiracy.

To fund the transition, producer
counties will have to keep prices at a certain level and control the flow,
increasing or decreasing it, developing new fields or opposing such
development, all according to their immediate needs, or whatever inter-mediate
or long-term plans they have. The personalities of different leaders and
ideological predilections will add another layer of complexity. It is these
countries that need to “conspire.” Their interactions will play out on
different levels ranging from diplomatic pressures, to economic sanctions, to
military intervention and support to terrorist groups. The intervention of
Iran, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in Syria seems to be fueled, in part, by
such considerations.

Meanwhile, countries like China
may not be able to afford the transition at such an “early” date, and/or might
require an intermediate step: finding its own cheap fossil fuel sources other
than coal to keep itself going. This could translate into greater assertiveness
in the South China Sea, and beyond over the next few decades. What about other
countries in the area? How about Nigeria? Venezuela? Brazil? Turkmenistan?
Azerbaijan? The Arctic?

Whatever the answers are, and
irrespective of the necessity of the Paris Agreement and the transition itself
from an environmental perspective, the immediate outcomes of the Paris
Agreement in practical terms is more state failures, more conflicts, more
atrocities and more tragedies – all happening at a time when the international
order is in complete disarray, democracies are retrenching, and illiberal
forces are reasserting themselves on the global scene. The environmental
consequences of all that might nullify whatever benefits that could be derived
from a reduction in dependence on fossil fuel.

No matter what we do, there is
not running away from the need of establishing a strong international system
for managing the transition with all its complications. We need to reinvent the
UN. But first we need to find and empower the right caliber leadership, morally
and strategically, to make this possible.

The Deliricon

Whackamolia:
A land that would have been considered mythical and fantastical had it not been
all too real. It in effect overlays the known world imposing a new reality on
it that allows for certain security threats to seem defeated in certain
locations, only to emerge, almost simultaneously, elsewhere, where it
metastasizes and fractures giving birth to new entities that will develop lives
and minds of their own. Once all attention is shifted to them, the original
threatening entity soon reemerges in its old habitats, even as it continues to
spread elsewhere as well. One has to develop two, three, ten hands and keep on
developing hands, as it tries to whack this mole that keeps gnawing at its
skin.

Not to be confused with Guacamolia
– a new restaurant chain dedicated to celebrating the countless ways in which
Guacamole can enchant the human pallet by fusing together different cuisines
from the Far East to the rugged West. The chain will be launched once a certain
author and activist wins the lottery, finds the right partners and learns how
to cook.

Druncula:
A smug and vicious tyrant going through a particularly repressive and bloody
period in his rule, and relishing every bit of it.

​Syria: A top rebel's death casts doubt over Bashar
al-Assad's intentions.
Oh come on. Bashar's intentions have always been clear, ever since he
became the heir apparent even. There’s no point in raising this issue anymore.
We are dealing with a genocidal killer, pure and simple, a man whose’ sole
interest is to remain in play as an "indispensable leader," even if
that called on him to whore himself, and the tattered remains of the country
that he continues to treat as his personal fiefdom, to the Iranians and
Russians. The Annals of Shame is stock-full of maniacal figures yet, and
despite his mediocrity in our world, there… there he shines.

The
lavish side of Syria that Americans never see. “The documentary, "Inside
Assad's Syria," opens with young Syrians drinking and dancing at a
rooftop bar in Damascus, which seems unfathomable with the contrasting footage
of constant bombing and tank fighting going on in the capital city. It also
shows lavish resorts, wealthy Syrians enjoying the Mediterranean beach,
and regime loyalists attending the national symphony.” Well, that gives
a new meaning to the term “dances despite her wounds,” which was the title of a
movie directed by my late father back in the early 1970s. The difference here
of course is that the dancers are not the ones who are injured, and that there
is nothing heroic or admirable in their dancing while their country falls
apart, and they continue to celebrate and lionize, so to speak, the man
responsible for it all. My father’s movie was meant as socialist celebration of
a marginalized and reviled figure in our society: the belly-dancer, by showing
her human, noble and self-sacrificing side. It condemned both the elite and
traditional morality. How things have changed! Under Assad rule, the country
became chockful of dancers of all types, but none of them is noble, not to
mention heroic. And their new morality is much worse than the traditional one.
IS, Al-Nusra and other extremist groups are but pale mirror reflections of
Assad’s loyalists, and to a lesser extent, the rest of us as well. Those who
cheer are worse than those who do the actual killing. They are all drenched in
guilt.

And this is another side of Syria’s
lavish side: Nepalese
women trafficked to Syria and forced to work as maids “Unscrupulous agents
lure women into conflict zones with promises of employment abroad only to leave
them working long hours for little or no pay.” I guess, Assad’s wealthy loyalists,
and those loyalists by proxy, that is, through their silence, don’t have enough
access to enough downtrodden Syrians to abuse; they now have to import them. Poor
Assad & loyalists. Or, in the parlance of the international left, the real
revolutionaries and the true face of the legitimate resistance to imperialism. Sometimes
true colors are as ugly as the various shades of shit.

Hezbollah
Fighters Are Fed Up With Fighting Syria’s War. Well, dying for an Ass is as
appetizing as dying for few dozen virgins, and Hezbollah fighters know they are
dying for an Ass. But in the meantime, Hezbollah fighters are playing in active
part in the siege of Madaya: War
in Syria: Up to 40,000 civilians are starving in besieged Madaya, say
campaigners “Miles from the border with Lebanon, residents of a Syrian town are
being forced to eat insects, plants and even cats after a siege lasting six
months, hemmed in by land mines and Hezbollah forces.” Their comrades in
nearby Zabadani recently had to surrender to the inevitable as part of a deal.
The same scenario seems to be in the works here.

The Kurds Are Coming:Turkey
may finally be 'accepting the inevitable' in Syria. Leave it to my
senescent country of origin and a lingering passion to turn everybody into a
fatalist. But the sum total of my experiences so far, and the few insights that
I have managed to draw from it, inform me that the inevitable is more often a
haphazard creation than a haphazard occurrence, a product of unintended,
semi-intended, or not really intended, at least not for now, consequences.

Regarding Syria, my objection
should be obvious, but perhaps not to an administration run by a President like
Mr. Barack Slug-on-Crack Obama and a Secretary of State like Mr. Johnny
Obviously. They see wasteland, made by others admittedly but allowed to happen
through their indifference, and they call it peace, and their acceptance of the
consequences of their acceptance victory.

Regarding Ayan, I understand why
she should feel how she feels, I was in her position at one point in my life,
that period when you get disillusioned with something that was part of your
life for so long (albeit as a woman and a victim of FGM, her personal
experiences are far tougher than mine). It’s normal to feel angry at the time,
and to hold that thing in particular disdain for a while thereafter. But
continuing to do so for so long, and to intellectualize it even, is quite
pathological. I am so over that particular period in my life, I cannot even
remember how it felt, or understand the appeal. But that my autistic part, I
guess. I mean I feel the same about my literal yesterday at this stage. Others
are bound to have some lingering feelings and sensations. Still, to have so
much anger inside of you to this day, as to continue seeing Islam as
particularly toxic, does give me pause. There are far more objective reasons
for the toxicity imbuing the lives of people of in Muslim-majority countries
and communities that are far more relevant than Islam. Islam is only a small
part of the problem, and treating it with so much anger and disdain is
counterproductive. Not that I am against heresy and ridicule, hell now, I am
against the negative exceptionalism projected onto Islam.

No, Islam is not particularly
evil, and the great majority of our problems will not be over if we turned away
from it towards other faith systems. The rule of reason doesn’t completely
require a disbelief in the metaphysical, it simply demands that we be less
assertive about it, or, at very least, nonviolent in our assertion of it. When
faith breeds anger and hate rather than serenity and confidence, there is something
definitely wrong with it, but that seems a problem with the particular faithful
lot involved rather than the faith itself. The same observation holds true for
faithlessness.

I am not trying to vilify Ayan,
but being fellow heretics should not spare us from each other’s criticism, even
if vehement. We can bicker and still stand by each other’s right to have
different opinions.

And to top it off, here he is
Vladdie ​the Ethnic
Cleanser, with a purpose, the Child Killer, only as “collateral damage”, the
Enclaves-Maker, for strategic purposes only, the Stalwart Defender of
Autocrats, big and small, smart and dumb, cocky and cock-eating (think Assad
and you won’t be wrong), the Voracious Feaster on the West's Indifference and
Folly (where supplies are bounteous these days)... delivering a message to President
Obama the Reluctant, the Walk-Backer of Promises and Threats, the Wise beyond
everyone else’s years that his wisdom ends up losing its relevance to any
reality at all, and all illusions – a message, or to put it in political
French, un mensonge, calling for cooperation (is there really a word for
that in the Russian political lexicon?) in order to "successfully take on new challenges and threats." The new challenges and threats
that people like them will keep generating, Vladdie and ilk through their
aggression, and Obama and comrades through their indifference. Quite the timely
message indeed.

The Faqihnameh:Iran
appoints new commander in Syria. “Following the “large number of IRGC casualties in
Syria, especially the death of General Hossein Hamedani, commander of the
Iranian regime’s forces in Syria, and injury to Commander of the IRGC Quds
Force (QF) Qassem Soleimani, Ayatollah Khamenei appointed IRGC Brigadier
General Mohammad Jafar Assadi the IRGC commander in Syria,” the opposition
group National Council of Resistance of Iran said.” So, this is our new
Faqih-in-Chief. Well, enchanté, and charmed I am sure! What a fortuitous
development! An Assadi for Assad? Wow! Talk about a match made in the lowest
depths of the highest of hells.

And there’s no stopping the
faqihs now: Iranian
Revolutionary Guards fired rockets near U.S. warships in Gulf - U.S. Such
acts may not make a difference for Obama & Co., but their domestic,
regional and international impact is enormous. Iran is the new boy in the hood
now. It creates a meaningless little showdown with America in the Gulf, and
intimidates a region. Obama may not care, but there are Saudis fulminating, and
others quaking in their boots. That will dictate the nature of future actions
by all, and that will have a strategic impact of which the U.S. should be
mindful, and which may not be positive.

Iran's
Plan for Syria Without Assad. Let’s make this clear: Assad has long become
dispensable, and Iran has for long been planning for a Syria without him. I
first raised this issue back in a
report published on January 15, 2013. In it, I referred to Iran’s ongoing
efforts at the time to build a command structure under Assad made up of
loyalist militia leaders and some new rising “stars” within the Alawite
security establishment. The report concluded with this statement:

Once the new
structure is consolidated, or is close to consolidation, Assad himself and
perhaps some of his close advisers, might be seen as liabilities, and Assad as
a martyr might just prove more relevant and useful to the cause of Alawite
Pride than his continued survival. With his martyrdom, there will be no risk of
him doing or saying anything that can jeopardize the movement and the new power
structure.

But in order for Iran and Russia
to divest themselves of Assad, they still need to be seriously pressured into
it, or be given something in return from the other side. No, not the rebels, or
even their regional supporters, such as Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but
from the Unite States and her Western allies, that is, the countries that have
long called on Assad to step down, and which can offer something of
consequence: such as certain concessions in eastern Ukraine, or perhaps even
Moldova. For now that Iran and Russia are strongly present in
Syria, they need no concessions from anyone there. Recent changes in the Obama
Administration’s position on Assad and peace talks come as clear
acknowledgement of that.

But that acknowledgement is
actually a dual edge sword. By giving up Syria, and adopting their own
independent strategy vis-à-vis IS in Syria, knowing that Iran has to coordinate
with them in regard to the situation in Iraq for its own interests, the
administration can longer be pressured by the Russians and Iranians through
Syria.

What all this boils down to, in
regard to Assad is this: he is staying, not because he is indispensable, but
because there is no really reason to dispense of him at this stage, and because
he might still has some uses. This situation will continue until either the
U.S. rediscovers a need for demanding his ouster again, and a way to convince
the Russians and Iranians to play along, or at least the Russians, or, until
Assad, in some fit of foolishness to which he is often prone, makes himself too
much of a nuance to his patrons, and their plan to consolidate their hold on
the enclave they are creating.

Saudocalypse:Saudi
Arabia's mounting security challenges.
No. Saudi is not in good shape. Of that much has been written of late,
and most of it true. Saudi finds itself where even shortcuts are well-nigh
impossible. Can she buy a readymade nuclear program? Will Pakistan agree to
sell it? Can she still prevail upon it to do some of its biddings at least and
for the usual payoff, or thereabouts? Can she have what it takes to make the
transition to a post-oil economy, ow that the world has agreed to do so by
2050? Can she survive until then? Hell, can she even survive next year? Oh,
there are so many minds and pockets (and perhaps some dicks even – geopolitical
ones of course) that want to know.

In the meantime, and while every
bit of reasonable advice being offered to the Saudis demand that they impose
certain limits on the activities of the Wahhabi preachers, the problem that is
being encountered here is not merely an ideological one, and not merely about
the need to obtain much needed legitimate from the Wahhabi establishment. The
problem is that the Wahhabis are not merely a religious establishment, it has
long grown into a full-fledged clan with its own alliances, tribal, ideological
and blood-based (including many marriages to various Saudi princes), and its
own finances, based on a large and quite diverse investment portfolios. It’s
simply speaking the Other Ruling Family. Saudi Arabia has long become
Saudi-Wahhabi Arabia, and any talk of a split between the two is talk of an
actual civil war that will doom the country, and the region. And that will
empower the Faqihs. But a Shia minority, no matter how organized and
well-funded, cannot dominate a heavily Sunni-region, even when torn by all
manner of strife without recourse to systematic repression, ethnic cleaning,
mass killing, and support to terrorist groups and petty dictators.

Whackamolia:As
U.S. Focuses on ISIS and the Taliban, Al Qaeda Re-emerges. “The scope of Al
Qaeda’s deadly resilience in Afghanistan appears to have caught American and
Afghan officials by surprise. Until this fall, American officials had largely
focused on targeting the last remaining senior Qaeda leaders hiding along
Afghanistan’s rugged, mountainous border with Pakistan.” And in Syria,
it is Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s official representative there until recently,
and Ahrah Al-Sham, a close affiliate of both, that are benefiting from hits on
IS.

Meanwhile, losing leaders, as is
the case here: Airstrike
kills Islamic State leader in Syria with ties to the Paris attacks, U.S. says, while disruptive, may not actually seal the deal,
as IS, among other Islamist groups in the country, seems to have developed ways
for ensuring rapid and effective succession on all levels of leadership. Let’s
not forget here the rapid resurgence of Ahrar al-Sham shortly after the
assassination of all its top leaders in one go a year ago.

British
air strikes ‘kill ISIS fighters in Syria for the first time’ “Militants
believed to be inside checkpoint destroyed by Reaper drone on Christmas Day.”
Finally, the Brits have lost there IS-virginity. Now British pilots can hold
their heads up hi when they walk alongside their American and French
counterparts, or when they chat online with Russian and East European
prostitutes.

The Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights has documented death of nearly 55,219 persons
since 01/01/2015, until 31/12/2015. The casualties are as follows: Civilians:20,977 civilians, including 2,574
children, 1,944 female over the age of 18 and 8931 male over the age of
18. Rebel and Islamic fighters:7,728. Defected soldiers and officers:70. Regime soldiers and officers:8,819. Combatants from Popular Defense Committees, al-Ba’eth
battalions, National Defense Forces, al Shabiha, pro-regime informers and the
“Syrian resistance to liberate the Sanjak of Alexandretta”: 7,275.Militiamen from Hezbollah guerrilla:378.
Pro- regime Shia militiamen from Arab and Asian
nationalities, Al Quds Al Felastini Brigade and other pro-regime militiamen
from different Arab nationalities:1,214.Arab, European, Asian, American and Australian fighters from
the ISIS, al-Nusra Front, Junoud al-Sham battalion, Jund Al-Aqsa battalion,
Jund al-Sham organization and the
Islamic Turkestan Party:16,212. Unidentified
dead people (documented by photos and footages):274.

This video in Arabic was taken by
activists in the town of Hamourieyh, one of the many towns besieged by
pro-Assad militias in the region of Eastern Ghoutah, in eastern Damascus. It’s
a humorous video meant to mark the New Year’s celebrations. In it, local
activists roan through the streets asking the baffled people about where they
intend to celebrate the New Year’s Eve. The baffled responses include the
expected “at home,” “in bed,” “with family and friends,” “fighting,”
“surviving,” but then, there is this one: It depends on the nature of the
particular MIG bombing us. If it belongs to the regime, then, I’ll hitch a ride
to Qardaha (the Assad’s family hometown) and celebrate there, but if it’s a
Russian-owned MIG, then, I’ll hitch a ride to St. Petersburg, I hear they have
excellent museum there. And there it is: that famous Syrian gallows humor.
It’s been in vogue for a while:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Go ahead, patronize me!

IGD: We finally hit a perfect 10. We now offically live in the Age of Total Delirirum

The IGD or the Index of Global Delirium reflects the state of delirium in the world at a particular moment in time using a 1 to 10 measure, with 10 denoting the highest level of delirium. Levels of delirium change on the basis of various current developments such as instability, wars, terrorist activities, elections, sports events, financial meltdowns, leaks of sensitive information, etc. Note:levels of violence and delirium do not always coincide. IGD levels may rise even when violence levels seem to take a downturn.

Dystopia Today: The Home Front

Dystopia Today: The Global Stage

I Am Syria

Educators will find theI Am Syria websiteto be quite useful when it comes to finding audio-visual materials explaining the Syrian Crisis in general and the plight of the Syrian Refugees in particular. The site is maintained by a small team of volunteer educators and receives tens of thousands of visits per months.I am honored to be involved in this effort.

Recent Entries into The Holy Deliricon

Recent Entries into The Holy Delirindex

Recent Observations by Delirian Mundi

Recent Scenes from Theatrum Deliria

Recent Episodes from The Cauldron

Syria: A Fire Within

As anti-Assad demonstrations erupt across Syria, Ammar Abdulhamid, an exiled pioneer of the pro-democracy movement must convince US leaders that they have allies on the ground. Or else those allies, and the entire pro-democracy movement, may forever perish.